MSF resumes aid to South Sudan flashpoint region

Doctors Without Borders has resumed emergency operations in South Sudan's troubled Jonglei state to help thousands displaced by a recent bloody explosion of ethnic violence, a statement said Saturday.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) was forced to temporarily suspend emergency work when gunmen marched on the remote town of Pibor, looting its hospital there and a clinic in nearby Lekongele.

MSF is returning "with medical and logistic staff to start providing emergency medical treatment to those most in need, and to prepare the medical facilities for a more substantial scale-up," the statement read.

Some 6,000 rampaging armed youths from the Lou Nuer tribe last week marched on Pibor, home to the rival Murle people, whom they blame for abductions and cattle raiding and have vowed to exterminate.

"It seems that the inhabitants who fled into the bush are starting to return to Pibor town," MSF added, noting that its hospital was "totally ransacked."

"Although the main concrete building and roof are largely intact, little if any of the medical equipment or drugs are currently useable," the statement added.

South Sudan has declared Jonglei a national "disaster area" while the United Nations has said it will launch a "massive emergency operation" to help those uprooted by the violence.

The United Nations says about 50,000 people around Pibor need emergency assistance, while the UN World Food Programme is already sending rations.

"We condemn the targeting of medical facilities by any armed group and we commit to continue to bring humanitarian aid and medical assistance to the population of Jonglei state," MSF added, stressing its neutrality.

The Lou Nuer gunmen withdrew from Pibor after the army sent reinforcements and UN peacekeepers beefed up security in the isolated area.

Joshua Konyi, commissioner for Pibor county and himself a Murle, has said that 3,141 people were killed in the attacks, but the death tolls have not been confirmed by the United Nations or South Sudan's army.

If confirmed, the killings of 3,141 people would be the worst outbreak of ethnic violence yet in the fledgling nation, which split from Sudan last July.